1. Federal constitutional process

2. Legislative efforts
     State of Lincoln    State of Jefferson   Texlahoma 

3. See also

4. References

5. External links

Texas divisionists argue that the division of their state could be desirable because, as the second-largest and second most-populous state in the U.S., Texas is too large to be governed efficiently as one political unit, or that in several states Texans would gain more power at the federal level, particularly in the U.S. Senate, where each state elects two Senators, and by extension in the Electoral College, in which each state gets two electoral votes for their Senators in addition to an electoral vote for each Representative. However, division may be wastefully duplicative, requiring a new state government for each new state.

Federal constitutional process

Article IV, Section 3, of The United States Constitution expressly prohibits any other state from dividing up and forming smaller states without Congressional approval. The relevant clause says "New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress".^[2]

The Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, approved by Congress on March 1, 1845, states that "New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution".^[1]

Proponents of creating new states argue that the resolution of 1845, a bill which passed both houses of Congress, stands as Congressional "pre-approval" under the terms of the Constitution for formation of such new states. Opponents argue that Constitution require future Congressional approval of any new states that are proposed to be formed from what is now the state of Texas.

Some constitutional scholars argue that any special "right" of Texas to create new states was ended by the secession of Texas in 1861, to join the Confederacy, and its subsequent, formal, readmission to the United States of America in 1865.{{citation needed|date=June 2016}} Complicating this argument is an 1869 United States Supreme Court ruling, Texas v. White, holding that Texas remained part of the United States even during the Civil War.

Legislative efforts

The division of the state of Texas was frequently proposed in the early decades of Texan statehood, particularly in the decades immediately prior to and following the American Civil War.

State of Lincoln

The State of Lincoln was proposed in 1869, to be carved out of the territory of Texas from the area south and west of the state's Colorado River. Unlike many other Texas division proposals of the Reconstruction period, this one was presented to Congress, but Congress did not approve it.

State of Jefferson

A bill was introduced in the Texas legislature in 1915 to create a State of Jefferson, made up of the Texas Panhandle.^[3]

Texlahoma

In 1935,^[4] in response to what proponents felt was lack of state attention to road infrastructure, A. P. Sights proposed that 46 northern Texas counties and 23 western Oklahoma counties secede to form a new, roughly rectangular state called Texlahoma.^[5]

See also

• Partition and secession in California

References

External links

• Snopes.com entry on the history of the proposal
• [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/messing-with-texas/ "Messing with Texas," a post on the FiveThirtyEight blog on the political implications of a hypothetical modern-day division of Texas]

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